Those Two Words
by Virgo Writer
Summary: In less than 24 hours she would be leaving Boulder – who knew for how long. What was there to lose? Post-2012 Payson/Sasha
1. I Love You

**Those Two Words**

A/N: I was listening to **Cele Doua Cuvinte (Those Two Words) **and this was inspired, which is kind of strange because the song is actually really upbeat and catchy (and has absolutely no connection to what happens in this drabble other than sharing the same last line) and this, for the most part, is rather depressing and angsty.

I am thinking about turning it into a two-shot, but I'm not sure what to do with the second part. It just feels like it needs a second part . . . oh you'll see when you get there.

Disclaimer: I do not own **Make It or Break It**

* * *

><p>Summary: In less than 24 hours she would be leaving Boulder – who knew for how long. What was there to lose? PaysonSasha

* * *

><p>.<p>

**Those Two Words**

"Sasha, could I talk to you for a moment?" she asked, pulling him away from the small group of adults gathered around him. They were fawning over him in a way that they hadn't in the three years he'd been at The Rock – of course, he hadn't been responsible for bringing four incredibly talented girls to the Olympics then so it was completely understandable how he wasn't worthy of his attention at the time.

"Of course, Payson," he said, sending her a warm smile. In her more ridiculous moments she liked to think that smile was meant only for her. The small fantasy made her smile, even if she knew it wasn't real.

He slipped away from the group, looking grateful for her interference. "What did you want to talk about, Payson?" he asked her concernedly.

"Can we . . . can we go somewhere a bit more private?" she asked him cautiously, biting her lip.

"We can head up to the office," he suggested, putting his hand on her arm to guide her in the direction of the freestanding stairs. She shook her head quickly, knowing that the gym office was the last place that she wanted this conversation to occur. He frowned at her but didn't question her refusal, instead changing direction and leading her outside to the empty carpark.

"Are you okay, Payson?" he asked gently, the hand on her arm squeezing her reassuringly.

She nodded, feeling increasingly nervous as the seconds passed. "I just . . . I'm leaving for that media tour tomorrow," she told him, avoiding his gaze. "I just . . . wanted to say a proper good bye."

His expression saddened, but he didn't question the sense of finality in her words. In less than 24 hours she'd be leaving Boulder – who knew for how long. They might never see one another again, and even if they did, they'd be nothing to each other. The thing that brought them together was over and this good bye was already a month overdue.

"I'm so proud of everything you've done, Payson," he told her lowly, not ready to say those two words just yet. "You are the greatest gymnast I have ever had the honour to coach."

She smiled weakly, tears forming in her eyes as he spoke. "It's you, Sasha," she told him, just like she had once before. "I wouldn't be anything without you."

She took a bold step forward, closing the space between them. "I love you," she told him quietly. That was all the warning she gave him before rising on the balls of her feet and catching his face in her hands, pulling him down to meet her lips.

He didn't push her away this time – she didn't give him the chance. It was only a brief kiss, just long enough to convey everything that she hadn't been able to say in words. He was her heart. He was her match. She would love him forever.

She didn't wait to hear his reply, stepping away with a strangled sob before he could protest or let her down gently. As long as he didn't say it there was still hope and she could go on pretending.

"Good bye," she whispered as she walked away. It was over.

* * *

><p>She returned to Boulder, reluctantly, four months later for Christmas with her family. She felt uneasy and astutely avoided The Rock and anywhere she might run into Sasha. She felt a fool for what she'd done, even though it all made perfect sense at the time. She thought she had nothing to lose, but the truth was, he was never hers to gain.<p>

"You should meet the new coach," Becca suggested happily only a few days before Christmas. "He's really cool."

Payson was momentarily stunned. "You have a new coach?" she questioned, sending her mother a confused look.

"I told you this, sweetheart," Kim responded. "Sasha left not long after you girls went on your exhibition."

Payson couldn't help but feel saddened by the revelation, and yet she wasn't really surprised. The only thing that had kept him in Boulder for so long was them – his rebels – and once they were gone, it wasn't all that surprising that he left.

But she let Becca take her to The Rock and introduce her to the new head coach all the same. He was, it seemed, an old friend of Sasha's from Romania – a former Romanian gymnast named Aurel Levandovschi whose career had been cut short before it had truly began. He didn't seem surprised to see her there and ushered her into his office where they could talk more privately.

"I was wondering when you would come visit, Payson Keeler," he said, his English accented. "This is for you." He opened one of the draws in his desk and pulled out an envelope with her name on it in Sasha's familiar handwriting.

"Do I want to read this?" she asked seriously, eying the letter dubiously as it was handed to her. She still remembered the last time that Sasha had written her a letter, and how she cried for days afterwards just wishing he'd come back.

"I do not know if it is good or it is bad," Aurel answered her, shrugging his shoulders. "All I know is that he wanted me to give this to you if you were to come back."

"And if I didn't?" she asked.

"I think he was hoping you would." He patted her gently on the shoulder and left her in the office to collect her thoughts and build up the necessary courage to face whatever lay inside the envelope.

It wasn't what she expected. Just two words on a post-it note and a first class ticket to Bucharest, Romania scheduled the day after Christmas.

**Te Iubesc.**


	2. Forever

**Those Two Words**

A/N: I know it took forever, but I couldn't quite get the ending right, and then I was woken up at five o'clock this morning by a three legged dog (yes, an actual three legged dog) and it suddenly came to me how to end this, and I wrote it down, went back to sleep and then was surprised to find that despite semi-darkness and sleepiness I'd actually managed to write quite legibly and between the lines, just upside down, which I think is quite a feat. And this finally! had an ending.

Disclaimer: I do not own **Make It or Break It**.

* * *

><p><span>Forever<span>

"I thought you were staying?" Aurel frowned as Sasha gathered the few personal touches he had in the office into a cardboard box. It was just days since Payson had left Boulder, and already Sasha was feeling her absence. Someone, this quiet corner of suburbia nestled at the base of the Rocky Mountains seemed so much colder without her.

"I was and then I wasn't," Sasha answered plainly. "It's complicated," he sighed.

Aurel shook his head and handed over a picture of Sasha and his gymnasts. "It is not," Aurel disagreed. "It is actually very _simplu_. You love her. You go find her," he said, pointing to the blonde gymnast standing closest to Sasha in the picture.

"This is not like you, Sandu," he continued. "Why won't you fight for her?"

"It's not that easy, Aurel," Sasha protested. "Do you really think I don't want to go after her? Payson is . . ." he began passionately, trailing off as he spoke her name.

"She's all I can think about," he said sadly. "I can barely breath when I'm near her and it broke my heart to see her leave.

"She thinks she loves me," he admitted, finally saying it aloud. "And maybe she does," he conceded with a shake of his head. "A small part of me hopes that it's true, but it's wrong. I'm wrong. I'm the worst person in the world for her and I won't let myself hurt her."

"So you let her leave?" Aurel questioned. "That is your solution. You hurt her now instead of hurt later?

"You do not know that you will hurt her, Sandu. Not unless in our time apart you have discovered the _ghicitor_?" he asked almost derisively, the word taken from the language of the Romany (gypsies) rather than their native tongue.

"You don't understand," Sasha said, trying to convince himself as much as he was trying to convince Aurel. "She's still so young and she has the world at her fingertips.

"She deserves so much more than what I can give her," he finished sadly, his body sagging as he finally faced the reason for his inaction.

"I think it is you who does not understand, Sandu," Aurel said sympathetically. "She is not wanting the world. Only you. I do not think you can deny her so much."

"It's the one thing I will deny her," Sasha responded, his lips set in a thin determined line. "It's for her own good.

"She'll realize that. One day," he assured himself.

"She's so good," he said softly, his voice choked with emotion. "And some day she'll realize that . . . she's better off without me."

* * *

><p>And so months went by, months he spent doing everything in his power to keep his mind off Payson Keeler. Months he spent desperately trying to convince himself that he didn't love her, and when that failed, that she didn't love him. Months he spent assuring himself that he'd done the right thing in leaving Boulder and staying out of her life – that is was, as Aurel said, better to hurt her now than later.<p>

But none of it worked. No matter how many fish he tried to catch; no matter how many books he tried to read; no matter how many dishes he tried (unsuccessfully) to learn how to prepare from cable TV; no matter how many rooms of his house he tried to redecorate, she wouldn't leave his mind or his heart. It was too hard to deny his own feelings – he'd known the moment he returned to The Rock that his feelings for Payson were well beyond the platonic coach-athlete relationship they were meant to be confined to – and the more he thought about her, the harder it got to deny hers as well.

There were little things that gave her away and that he should have seen sooner. He thought about the way she had smiled at him every morning as he opened the gym and the way she had lingered in the evenings until she had no legitimate excuse left for being there. And then there were th little things she'd done that made his day – little nuances that made him fall more hopelessly in love with her. It was in the way their eyes would meet, and the way she always held his gaze longer than appropriate.

He couldn't deny it any longer. She loved him, and that realization broke his heart.

Which only made his decision that much harder to accept. It was easier, but not easy, to believe he'd made the right decision in letting her go and moving on when he was sure that she was wrong when she said she loved him. Knowing that she loved him only made it so much harder.

Because he did love her – more than anything in this world – and it killed him to be away from her. And because he loved her – and because he knew she loved him – he couldn't inflict that pain upon her.

It was time to ask Aurel a favour.

* * *

><p>"So?" he asked, standing casually at the door of his old office.<p>

She gasped at the sound of his voice, turning in her chair with her hand to her mouth and her eyes glistening with emotions.

"W-what are you doing here?" she asked him and rose shakily to her feet. She looked as though she wasn't sure he was real, wringing her hands together to keep from reaching and touching him to test.

"I had to make sure you got my message," he said casually, as though those two words on a yellow piece of paper were as simple and insignificant as an obligatory 'What's up'.

"So?" he asked again, unable to stand the silence.

She stared at him for a few moments, unable to fully absorb the fact that he was truly there. "Say it," she said finally, looking as close to tears as he had ever seen her. She moved closer and he did the same, meeting her somewhere in the middle. "I need to hear you say it."

He nodded, knowing he had to give her that much. Saying those words hadn't served him well in the past, and perhaps that was rightly so. He hadn't meant it then, although he thought he did at the time. But how could it be true then when those feelings were like a drop in the ocean compared to what he felt for the young woman standing before him, a woman who had stolen his heart without even meaning to.

He bent his head towards her, pressing a feather light caress to her lips before pulling back just far enough to speak the words she longed to hear. "I love you, Payson Keeler," he told her, his lips brushing slightly against hers as he spoke. "_Te iubesc_," he repeated. "I lo – "

She cut off his final pronouncement, wrapping her arms around his neck and pushing forward to eliminate the tiny millimetre of space between them. It was unlike any of the kisses that preceded it – nothing like their not-quite-one-sided first kiss, or the sorrowful kiss they had shared last September that felt too much like a good bye to be truly enjoyable, or the chaste kiss he had stolen from her moments earlier. This kiss was passionate, mutual, and anything but chaste. They kissed like their whole world depended upon it and they couldn't exist without the other.

_"Te iubesc_," she replied as they pulled apart, the tears she had been fighting finally beating her. She smiled despite them, looking more beautiful than he had words to describe.

He kissed her again, cupping her face in his hands as he did so, before pulling back so she could answer his question. He dropped his hands from her face and placed them on her waist. "So you'll come with me?"

She nodded happily. "I'd follow you to the ends of the earth, Sasha," she told him. "I love you."

"I love you too," he responded immediately. "And I'm so sorry, Payson, for letting you think otherwise. I -"

"It doesn't matter," she said cutting him off before he could explain himself. His reasons for taking so long didn't matter, just so long as he was here with her now, and she told him as much in her own, concise way.

"I'm here for as long as you'll have me, Payson," he responded lowly, his arms circling her tightly.

"So forever?" she suggested cheekily, her eyes bright with hope.

Sasha nodded his sincerity. "Pe vecie."

_**Te iubesc pe vecie**_

~ FIN~

* * *

><p><strong>Translation: <strong>

I don't think _ghicito_r is Romany unless I accidentally guessed its etymology. I was hoping to find such a word and I liked the line that followed it, so it stayed._** Ghicitor**_ means 'soothsayer' in Romanian.


End file.
